Increasingly, vehicles (e.g., automobiles, trucks, boats, and the like) include integrated communications systems and/or systems for communicating with or controlling non-integrated communications systems. For example, many vehicles include systems to access and communicate via cellular or satellite communications. Additionally or alternatively, many vehicles include local area communications systems, such as Bluetooth communications devices, that are capable of accessing cellular, wireless local area networks (WLANs) or satellite communications devices. Bluetooth is a registered trademark of Bluetooth SIG, Inc., of Delaware.
These communications systems are typically designed to be controlled by a user to facilitate voice communications using external communication networks. Hence, the modems included within these vehicle-integrated systems are typically “voice” modems. Voice modems are relatively “slower” modems when compared with data-specific modems for several reasons. First, the relative amount of data required to facilitate voice communications is significantly less than required for contemporary data communications. Second, voice modem signals have to go through a speech encoding/decoding process which requires some time to perform.
While these systems are specifically used for transmitting voice signals, in many applications it is desirable to utilize these vehicle-integrated communications systems to communicate a wider variety of data. This data may include information about an associated vehicle (e.g., make, model, year, color, maintenance record, and the like), information about the passengers or cargo in the vehicle, (e.g., name, medical history, age, gender, and the like) information related to an emergency condition associated with the vehicle, and other information.
It would be desirable to have a system and method for communicating data using communications systems that are integrated within vehicles where the system is highly robust, yet capable of communicating the data very rapidly.